Women's Issues

This thread is intended to discuss women's issues. Topics can include but are not limited to specific women's health situations from PMS to menopause and all instances in between, pregnancy and motherhood, family dynamics like sisterhood and best friends, women's art movements and expressions of female creativity, women's fashion and physical expression, and other related topics.

This is not a sexism thread. We already have a Sexism thread. While there will be oppertunities to discuss cases of sexism involving women, I do not want this thread to be dominated by just that. There are more to women's issues than just sexism. Let's try to make this as constructive a discussion as possible.

This thread is also the chance for men to ask questions of women and at least hopefully spead some knowledge. I don't want the guys to feel left out. This is not an invitation for instigations of oppression olympics or one-upping.

That being said, let the discussion begin!

OCD can be a post pardem affliction.

I have never given birth, but I have been around women who have and the complications they have from giving birth. I am glad we are learning more and more about what pregnancy does to a woman's hormones and chemical composition.

Not only can we better help new mothers, we can possibly change a lot of the poor perceptions we have in the form of stereotypes and whatnot of new mothers.

Happy International Women's Day!!!

It seems like the more we understand of Postpardem Depression and what chemical imbalances occur with pregnancy, the more we have yet to understand.

I think my friend had OCD as a pre-partum affliction...

Okay, not literally, but she got obsessed with reading every book about pregnancy, childbirth, and early childhood she could get her hands on. She was so Crazy-Prepared, she was the Batman of giving birth.

On a more general note, it's hard to think of women's issues that don't in some way involve sexism. I think that's because the mere fact that we have a concept of "women's issues" as something separate from, simply, "issues," is due to sexism.

I was thinking about how we can discuss women's issues without bringing up sexism. It's not incredibly difficult, but still hard to avoid, especially given International Women's Day occurring just as Arkansas has just about destroyed female residents' right to get abortions. Teen pregnancy is very high in our state, and our sex education and contraception programs are sub-par in many school districts. The current ruling isn't going to curb these unplanned pregnancies. I'm not happy about this situation at all.

Anyway, I wanted to mentioned something relevant about mother-child relations. I forgot to bookmark it, but I once read a list of guidelines for reinforcing a healthy psychological bond between the mother and the child. Some of these seem pretty obvious, but they're not to a lot of women. Methods included cuddling the baby in a low-light environment, especially after feeding. Supposedly, this aids the child in making smoother transitions between daytime and nighttime without sudden jolts in their sleep cycle. Breastfeeding while cuddling or petting can also stimulate a more positive response from the baby, and a substantiated yet inconclusive study shows that there is a strong link between physical affection during and after breastfeeding and a stronger immune system for the baby and possibly even the mother. The lymphatic system is said to become more active and efficient as lymph nodes are stimulated by heightened activity in the circulatory system and the mammary glands. Interesting stuff.

edited 8th Mar '13 9:43:25 PM by Aprilla

Not much to add but I'm glad this thread was open for IWD.

So... Pap smears all that. Despite some controversy the school cervical cancer vaccine progarm has been hailed as a huge success and there has been plans a foot giving it boys, who obviously cannot develop cervical cancer can contract the HPA virus and pass it to women.

edited 9th Mar '13 12:43:42 AM by joeyjojo

Not cervical cancer specifically, but HPA is a cancer factor in boys as well.

As mentioned in the OP, there is nothing wrong with discussing sexism involving women, but that's not the only thing we can talk about.

And as Aprilla brought up with Arkansas's blatent war on women's health, you can bring up sexism but it needs to be a constructive conversation point, not a bitch fest.

Moving on:

I am not surprised that Karalora's friend went into hyper mode. Nor am I surprised the actions that Aprilla described are obvious, but not. Women, especially in my local experience, seem to be very confused over what is "natural" with pregnancy because they are so ill prepared when they do become pregnant. Some of it is the age or education of the mother yes, but as Polarstern pointed out there are some scientific understandings we are still trying to figure out on how the mother is affected from giving birth.

I'm part of a New Mommy group on Facebook on behalf of a friend. Today a mother was freaking out because her 4 month old was trying to pull up and she was afraid he would break his legs...seriously...

It seems too many women look at all this material saying "you should be here" during pregnancy and then have the same "they should be here" mentality towards their children. It's okay to have broad ideas of development but pregnancy and children are very individual and personal. Things won't always match and most of the time, that's okay.

The more I read on it the happier I am that I was able to skip the birthing process. Advantages such as what Aprilla described are small consolations on the devistation giving birth does to a woman's body.

My daughter is at that age where we're going to have to go in for her first exams. And as much as she hates it I already signed her up to get the HPV vaccine. The risks aren't just of cancer alone. Some women have heart attacks and strokes because of it.

It's not worth the risk.

Any particular reason why she hates it? Does she resent her caring mother sticking her nose into her health care or does she just dislike having shots?

I wonder how old one has to be for it not to be effective...

edited 9th Mar '13 12:54:57 PM by Gabrael

she really, really hates needles...

I couldn't find anything that said what age(ish) it would be useless. Though I did see several articles that said the baby boomers were becoming larger risk factors because the carriers were beginning to be active due to obesity or weakened systems from other illnesses or age.

I couldn't really find any information regarding age effectiveness but my general understanding of it seems to be that their 20s most people have already been exposed to the virus making the vaccine redundant. Still if you're interested Speak To Your Doctor.

no sewing clirces then?

Haha probably not, but she can cook like a pro!

Woman fired for pre-marriage pregnancy, job offered to her fiance and father of child.

Christian schools aren't the only ones who require morality clauses, all of the school teachers I know, three public and one private all have morality clauses including no live-in boyfriends and no premarital sex. None of them follow it. But it could cost them their jobs.

While I believe that private schools have the right to make whatever stipulations they want. They're private. But for a public school it is asinine.

It's almost like firing teachers for finding them with a history of pornography. Never have I heard of a male teacher fired or punished for this. Though they potentially could be.

It is just fustrating to see such confusing and mixed signals over what women are supposed to be. The same actions or qualities that would idealize a woman can damn her if the context is off even by a fraction.

edited 9th Mar '13 9:04:43 PM by Gabrael

Counselors also have similar morality clauses, though they mainly deal with transparency of lifestyle more than restriction of lifestyle. If you declare that you are LGBT/partnered/former drug addict/drinker of any level/religious you are okay. But if your board finds out you used to be or are connected to something like this, especially a legal case, you can be held for review.

I had to report my girlfriend's father being arrested and held for domestic battery against her mother. When I was adopting my children, I had to declare my daughter's mental health assessment.

I can understand why myself as a professional trusted to aid people with their most intangible problems. No reason for teachers to be like that.

I'm pretty apologetic towards conservative institution and their rights, but honestly this angers me. Doesn't this fly in the face of discrimination law?

@Polarstern: I guess you can see the reasons for it. But 'expectations of transparency' of your personal history and lifestyle seems worst to me then restrictions on personal lifestyle.

Anyway I don't want to drag this into politics.

edited 10th Mar '13 1:14:46 AM by joeyjojo

I'd love to know how one part of a couple is suddenly less moral for having a pregnancy than the other... Particularly when the pregnancy has nothing to do with the work.

edited 10th Mar '13 6:37:28 AM by Euodiachloris

There is an accusation that they actually just wanted out of having to pay for her maternity leave rather then any serous moral objections.

as if that's supposed to make it better?

@Joey,

It's mainly to protect me. Such as when I was working in the state hospital, I was surrounded by some very extreme and worrisome cases. If the client or their family found out something about me, say I am gay or (at the time) I didn't have kids, they can accuse me of improper treatment.

But if the board knew about that beforehand, they can have my back on it and help me.

It is very dangerous to work with mental heath paitents. Not only legally but physically and emotionally. If one of my paitents say commits a crime or commits suicide, I can loose it all besides possible jail time.

But teachers? Nah. Not near as important. It's just another way some are trying to oppress and control women.

In Gabriel's link, yeah, I'd say that's just the school board trying to control women.

However, I should probably point out that it's not something that happens solely to female teachers. I have a few friends (male and female) who are teaching elementary through highschool, and they have the WEIRDEST restrictions on what they can and cannot do off the clock.

From what they've said about it, it's less about protecting the kids, and more about protecting the school from lawsuits. It doesn't matter if the case wins in court or not, a lawsuit alleging improper behavior from a teacher costs the district a lot of money.

Of course it happens to men too. But as long as the majority of elementry teachers are still women, it is very much a woman's issue. Which when taken into consideration as a whole with the other oppressive measures politicians and social organizations are trying to women, it's depressing.

It's like saying men are hurt by the war on women's reproductive rights, which they are, but only indirectly because until we get male birth control besides condoms and more medical treatments for a myriad of women's health issues besides contraception, this is primarily a women's issue as well.

I'm just clarifying that this is a problem faced by educators in general. I don't doubt at all that the Moral Guardians are using it to oppress women, I just want to make sure everyone knows that any teacher can get in trouble for really stupid stuff too, just because Gabrael said she had never heard of a male teacher getting in trouble for this stuff.

Edit: Now that I think about it, all the instances of teachers getting in trouble over stupid stuff parallels stereotypes and stigmas that are present in society at large (eg, "women should be chaste" or "men are pedophiles"). It makes sense (not that I agree with it, I can just see the logic present), because all the rules about behavior are in place because they want parents to feel comfortable leaving their kids in the care of a complete stranger.

edited 10th Mar '13 10:01:26 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

Arkansas pretty much declares war on women by proposing that life begins at conception.

I need to move. Fast.

edited 12th Mar '13 9:47:35 PM by Gabrael